


39 Downton Road

by Alchemine



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-26
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2020-10-28 22:03:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 20,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20785763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alchemine/pseuds/Alchemine
Summary: Schoolteacher Joseph Molesley is just settling in at his new address when he mistakenly receives a delivery for his upstairs neighbour, Phyllis Baxter, a seamstress who never seems to leave home. Modern AU, Baxley.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written a modern AU before, but this one got into my head and wouldn't leave, so here we go! Not sure yet how long it will be, but hopefully not yet another epic.

At first glance Molesley thinks the parcel outside his front door must be the books he ordered earlier in the week: the damp, battered brown box is about the right size, and with his arms full of food shopping and his reading specs in his shirt pocket, he can’t very well bend down to read the label. He can’t pick the box up either, so after he’s juggled bags and keys and wrested the door open, he boots it through the gap like a football, just to get it inside. It already looks as if it’s been through a war zone on its journey from some distant warehouse; a few more scuffs can’t do it any harm.

Once his shopping is sorted out on the kitchen table to put away later, and his shoes have been pulled off and set in the boot tray to dry, he finally turns his attention to the parcel and discovers that not only does it not contain his books, it doesn’t belong to him at all. It’s too light by half, for one thing, and it’s also addressed to a Phyllis Baxter, who appears to live above him, on the topmost floor.

Interesting, Molesley thinks. He’s noticed the neatly printed_ P Baxter_ tag on the corresponding bell downstairs, but in his three weeks of living here, has never laid eyes on _P Baxter_ in the flesh. He’s met many of the other denizens of number 39, Downton Road—ancient Mrs Crawley on the ground floor, who watches people passing by her bay window as if it’s her job; the Amin family’s twins, Zara and Mohammed, who have nearly run him down more than once on their matching bright red scooters—but until this moment he hasn’t known whether _P Baxter_ was a Phyllis or a Percival, just that they were very, very quiet. Except for the occasional faint sound of water running or a door being closed, there might not have been anyone living upstairs at all.

Molesley holds Phyllis Baxter’s surprisingly lightweight parcel (the sender is a company called Stitchcraft, he notes) and thinks about just leaving it outside her door for her to find, the same way he found it outside his own. He isn’t the best at introducing himself to strangers, and especially not to lady strangers, unless they’re as old as Mrs Crawley; he has a tendency to ramble on and then feel awkward and embarrassed about it later. But no, he thinks, he ought to make an effort and be neighbourly. He’ll give a quick tap, and if she doesn’t answer, he’ll deposit his burden and be on his way.

With his mind made up, he mounts the stairs, knocks at the door, which is painted a matte racing green like all the others in the building, and waits with his heart beating a little too fast. There’s a window to his left, and through it he can see the tops of autumn trees rippling in a stiff breeze, their bright russet and gold dulled by the wet, gloomy day. He’s just decided that Phyllis isn’t in when he hears a muffled voice just at the other side of the door.

“Yes?”

Molesley clears his throat. “Er, hello. We haven’t met—I mean not until now—but my name's Joseph Molesley. I live underneath you and I seem to have taken a delivery of yours by accident. I’ve brought it up if you’d like to have it?”

There’s a pause, as if the unseen Phyllis is considering whether to open up, or perhaps fetching a large butcher knife from her kitchen in case he turns out to be a murderer. Then he hears a deadbolt being undone from the inside, and the door opens a crack. It’s just enough for him to see that Phyllis isn’t a Crawley-esque dowager, but a woman his own age or a little younger, with wide, worried brown eyes and dark hair that falls forward across a pale face. She’s pretty enough that under other circumstances he might have been temporarily tongue-tied, but she looks so nervous herself that he can’t help feeling sympathetic towards her.

Phyllis glances from his face to the box tucked under his arm, and he presents it to her with as much of a flourish as he can manage.

“I haven’t opened it,” he assures her, and she gives him a small but genuine smile in return and inches the door a bit wider. 

“I didn’t think you would have, Mr Molesley. You don’t look the type. It wouldn’t have done you much good anyway, unless you can sew.”

“Not likely,” Molesley says. “Though I’d like to be able to sew children’s mouths shut, sometimes.” He realises this probably makes him sound like a murderer after all and hastily adds, “I’m a teacher. I’ve got a class of seven- and eight-year-olds this year, and they’re as noisy as magpies.”

He wonders if Phyllis will snatch her parcel and slam her door over this, but she barely seems to notice, looking past his shoulder as if she expects to see wolves lying in wait behind him. Her hands are delicate and long-fingered and as pale as her cheeks; he sees them tremble a little as she takes the box from him and offers up another smile.

“Thank you very much, Mr Molesley. I’m sorry to rush you, after you’ve been so kind, but I really ought to be getting back to my work.”

“Are you a seamstress?” Molesley’s sweating now, wanting to prolong the conversation he’d hoped to avoid, and also wondering what Phyllis is so afraid of. Apart from the possibility of an Amin twin suddenly zooming past, there doesn’t seem to be much threatening in a deserted upstairs corridor on a rainy afternoon.

“Yes,” Phyllis says. “Thank you again.” And gently but firmly, she closes Molesley out, leaving him to descend the stairs again in bewilderment. 

* * *

After his swift and strange meeting with his upstairs neighbour, Molesley finds it more difficult than expected to get back to his usual routine. At school, the children are doing projects on the ancient Romans; his classroom is drowning in laurel wreaths and mosaics heavy with paste, and there’s not much time to dwell on Phyllis Baxter. But once they’ve gone for the day, and he’s straightening the rows of desks and sweeping up thousands of snipped paper bits, he finds his thoughts drifting in that direction more often than seems quite appropriate. What is the mysterious Miss Baxter doing up there above his head all day and night? (Is she even a _Miss_ Baxter? He doesn’t remember seeing rings on those long, elegant fingers when she took her parcel from him, not that that means anything in this day and age.) Why hasn’t he bumped into her on his way in or out of the building, for that matter? She obviously works at home, but even so, she must need to run an errand or just step out for a breath of air now and then, mustn’t she?

Molesley often goes for a late-night walk himself, head down and hands stuffed in his pockets against the chill, and he’s taken to stopping and looking up at the line of lamplight round her curtains, just to reassure himself that she’s still there and he hasn’t imagined her. He’s thought he heard a whisper of music filtering through a cracked-open window a few times, something soft and sweet and sad, but no more. He wants to ask Mrs Crawley, that canny observer, if she knows anything, but he also doesn’t want Phyllis to find out he’s been asking about her. So he marks spelling homework and explains how to subtract three-digit numbers and starts planning the transition from Romans to Vikings, and he’s almost successful in forgetting about Miss Baxter altogether, until the Saturday morning when he’s woken up by a splash of cold water on his face.

It’s a tiny splash, right on the bridge of his nose, and at first he thinks it’s part of a dream—he built a model aqueduct out of Lego with the kids yesterday, and probably still has water on the brain—but then another one comes, and another, and he groans and rolls over to find that his pillow is clammy and wet under his cheek. There’s a leak in the ceiling, slow but persistent, and given the layout of the building, only one place it’s likely to be coming from.

Molesley fetches a big enamelled bowl (it says POPCORN in bright circus-style lettering on the side, though he can’t recall ever using it to hold popcorn in actuality) and sets it on his mattress to catch the drops, and then he considers how much effort he should put into making himself presentable for a trip to _chez_ Baxter. He doesn’t want to look as if he’s tried too hard, but he also doesn’t want to repulse her with his scruffy weekend clothes and overnight stubble. At last he decides to split the difference and go without shaving, but wear one of the smart button-up shirts his dad gave him last Christmas. Feeling as good about himself as he’s likely to feel at quarter to nine in the morning, he makes the trek up the stairs again and knocks at the door. 

A pause, then the muffled voice he remembers from before: “Yes?”

“It’s Joe. Joseph Molesley, from downstairs. Look, I know it’s still early and I’m awfully sorry to bother you, but there’s a drip coming from my ceiling.”

“A what?”

“A _drip_.” He doesn’t mean to shout the word, but it comes out that way anyhow, and the timing couldn’t be worse, because Phyllis opens the door at the same moment and now he’s bellowing directly into her face. She’s done something different with her hair since their last encounter—added a few lighter strands to it, and pulled the sides back—so he has a clear view of the shock in her eyes. She doesn’t shut the door on him again, though, and he takes that as a blessing.

“A drip,” he repeats at a more normal volume. “I think there’s a leak up here, and it’s coming out through my bedroom ceiling. Would you mind looking to see what it is? You might be able to tighten something and stop it without too much trouble. I could help you look if you like.” He realises that he’s essentially inviting himself into her home and backtracks. “Or, er, I could just wait here. Or go away. Whatever you want me to do. It’s only my bed’s getting wet and—”

He can see Phyllis’s surprise starting to melt into amusement, which is not quite the reaction he’d like to provoke from her, but under the circumstances it seems the better alternative. She steps back and to one side, and behind her he sees not the shadowy bolthole he’s anticipating, but white walls lit by a dazzling spill of unexpected morning sunshine.

“You can come in,” she says, “but be quick.” 

While she’s doing up the deadbolt, he looks around and sees at once that the sun is pouring through a pair of flat glass rooflights that have to be recent additions to this old building. They flood the airy space with light despite the drawn curtains, and provide an excellent view of what appears to be Phyllis’s combination sitting room and workspace. One half of it is taken up with the standard sofa-and-chairs sort of furnishings, and in the other half there’s a professional-looking sewing machine, a long table topped with a heavy mat for cutting things out, and an entire wall of see-through plastic drawers filled with fabrics and buttons and embroidery thread. In the corner stands a dressmaker’s dummy, decked out in a black 1920s-style evening gown hung all over with jet beads and silk fringe. It gives the impression of glowering at him, even without a head, and he stares at it, fascinated, until Phyllis touches his sleeve.

“The drip, Mr Molesley.”

“Oh! Of course. Er, we should probably check the bathroom first.”

“Is my bathroom above your bedroom, though?” Phyllis frowns. “How can it be? The pipes—”

“Water runs down to the lowest available point.” Molesley feels a fully formed lecture on aqueducts threatening to escape from his mouth and holds it back with an effort. “Once it gets into the space under the floor, it might go anywhere.”

Phyllis looks sceptical, but she leads the way to the bathroom, which is small with elderly plumbing, and stands just outside it as if she would rather not be in such an enclosed space with him. One of her hands is clenched round something in her pocket, and he sees it’s a mobile phone: she’s ready to summon help if he behaves badly, which he supposes is only fair. They don’t really know each other, after all.

As he goes down on his knees in front of the sink cupboard, it occurs to him belatedly that he might be about to come face to face with her private things, but there’s no turning back now. Luckily—or perhaps unluckily—it doesn’t take more than a glance to see the water dribbling down from a join in the pipe and pooling at the back of the cupboard, then disappearing into a crack to wend its way towards his bedroom ceiling. 

“Have you found anything?” Phyllis has sidled into the bathroom and is behind him, looking over his shoulder. She smells of something sweet and a little old-fashioned, like orange blossoms or rosewater. It’s a pleasant experience, but he’s not sure he wants her to have such a good look at the thinning top of his hair, so he gets up quickly and closes the cupboard.

“It’s a leak, all right,” he says. “But not a very bad one. You can buy a roll of sealing tape and stop it for a day or two, until a plumber can come. There’s a hardware store—” 

Phyllis is shaking her head. “I’ll find someone who will come today. Everything’s on the internet if you know where to look.” 

“On a Saturday, at short notice? It’ll cost you a fortune.”

“That’s all right.”

“Honestly, it’s a five-minute walk to the shop.” Molesley gazes down at her, perplexed. “I’ll go for you if you like.” 

“Would you really?” Phyllis looks as relieved as if he’s offered to hike across a desert or climb a mountain for her, leaving him more baffled than ever. “I’ll give you the money, of course. And if anything of yours has been damaged, I’ll be glad to replace that as well.”

“Nothing but a soggy pillow,” Molesley assures her. “It’ll be dry by tonight. I don’t think the leak’s been there long enough to spoil the plaster, but if it has, I’ll worry about that later.”

“If it’s no trouble….”

“Not a bit,” Molesley says. “I’ll be back before you know it.” 


	2. Chapter 2

The shop is farther away than Molesley remembers, and he's not sure if he makes the trip quite as fast as he said he would, but he hurries along and returns out of breath, triumphantly brandishing a roll of silicone rubber tape. Phyllis lets him in with less hesitation than before, and instead of waiting outside the bathroom door, kneels beside him on the spotless tiles and watches him undo the roll.

"Are there instructions?"

"Don't need them," Molesley says, unwinding tape from itself and then from his fingers, where it wants to curl and cling. "My dad uses it all the time. His car's probably held together with it. Great stuff. Have you got a spare towel?"

Phyllis disappears for a moment and returns with a threadbare yellow bath towel, which he uses to dry the pipe and then to sop up the puddle underneath. Then he stretches himself out, head and shoulders inside the cupboard, legs sticking out awkwardly behind (here he suffers a brief memory of a younger cousin telling him, aged fifteen, that he looked like a defective heron, but tries to ignore it), and attempts to wrap the tape around the leaky spot. He gets about three circuits in before his hand cramps up, and he swears, jerks back, bashes his head on the cupboard's door frame and swears again, even louder.

"Er, sorry," he says, with a shamefaced glance over his shoulder at Phyllis. On balance, he thinks it would be safe to say that things are not going according to plan: his hand is throbbing, his scalp is stinging, and his hair feels damp with something that he devoutly hopes is water and not blood.

"I've heard that one before," Phyllis says, and moves to one side so he can back out of the cupboard and sit up. "I may even have said it a time or two. Are you all right?"

"More or less." Molesley's afraid to touch his head, so he massages his wrist instead, unsure which part of him hurts the most. "It's awfully tight in there. Not the best angle."

"I could try if you like." She holds up her own hand, palm outward, and flexes her fingers for him to see. "I'm not a plumber, but if I can sew twenty-two-aught beads onto a vintage bag, I'm sure I can manage a bit of tape."

"What's a twenty-two-aught bead?" Molesley asks, curiosity piqued in spite of pain and embarrassment.

"A very small one," Phyllis says, and picks up the tape roll.

With some probably superfluous advice from him about pulling the tape tight and making sure it overlaps, she gets the pipe wrapped in a few minutes and withdraws from the cupboard, brushing her hands off on each other. before glancing over at him.

"Don't look so downcast, Mr Molesley. I wouldn't have known about the tape without you, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to get it that quickly."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"It doesn't matter," Phyllis says. "Just know that you've been a real help, and I'm very grateful." She's smiling so softly as she says it that he feels weak inside, and wonders in a daze why she has such a powerful effect on him. Usually he manages to behave like a reasonable person around women after the initial stammering and blathering—he'd never be able to work in a school, where most of his colleagues are women, if he couldn't—but something about this particular woman undoes him completely. He's not sure if it's because he's spent so much time thinking about her without actually seeing her, but he _is_ sure that he needs to pull himself together before she stops smiling at him and starts phoning the police after all.

"I should go," he says.

"Not until you've had a cup of tea," Phyllis says firmly. "It's the least I can do."

While she makes the tea in a kitchenette tucked into one corner of the big open space, he explores her work area, careful not to touch or bump into anything. Along with the evening gown and a frothy lace blouse on a padded satin hanger, he sees a pair of the intricate beaded bags she mentioned, nestled into open boxes full of foam packing chips, and what looks like the cut-out pieces of a midnight-blue velvet jacket, ready to be stitched together. There's a switched-off lamp with a flexible neck beside the sewing machine, which makes him imagine her working late into the night, long after the glass overhead has gone dark, while he sleeps in oblivion down below. Does she get lonely, he wonders, or is she too absorbed in her craft to notice?

"Are all the things you make like these?" he asks.

"Well, I do mending and repairs too," Phyllis says, pouring milk, "if someone finds their great-grandmother's wedding dress in a trunk, for example, or buys an old tailcoat at an auction. But yes, mostly I design and sew vintage-style clothes, with original fabrics and trimmings if I can get them. I have an Etsy shop, and I also take commissions for bespoke pieces. I'm sorry, you'll have to come over to the sofa to drink this—hot liquids and hundred-year-old velvet don't mix well, I'm afraid."

Molesley leaves the clothes behind, takes the mug he's offered and folds himself onto the sofa, which thankfully is an ordinary one and not an antique. Hands curled round her own mug, Phyllis settles down in a chair opposite him, looking as modern as the furniture in leggings and T-shirt and long grey cardigan: it seems she doesn't wear her creations, or at least not when she's at home.

_But she's always at home_, he thinks, and burns his tongue with a gulp of hot tea before he can blurt out a question she clearly doesn't want to answer.

"How long have you been sewing?" he asks once his mouth has cooled.

"I've been sewing for as long as I can remember." Phyllis's expression clouds. "But selling things online for three years. I had some troubles and—it was too difficult to go on doing the work I did before." She shakes her head, sets her mug down on a low table. "Anyway, you don't want to hear about all that. You said you were a teacher, didn't you, the first time we spoke? Tell me what that's like."

Molesley would, in fact, very much like to hear about _all that_, but obediently he launches into tales of his triumphs and failures in the classroom, from yesterday's aqueduct model to the infamous Glitter Disaster of 2017. Phyllis listens, laughing and groaning in all the right places, and by the time he leaves, positively sloshing with tea, he's told her ten times as much about himself as he's learned about her.

_How did she do that?_ he wonders, hotfooting it downstairs to do something about his overfull bladder in the privacy of his own bathroom. Somehow after an entire morning in her company, Phyllis Baxter is nearly as much of a mystery as she was at their first encounter—but one that he's more determined than ever to solve.


	3. Chapter 3

On the Monday morning following the adventure with the pipes, Molesley sees a workman heading upstairs, green boiler suit on and tool box in hand, presumably on the way to undo their makeshift repair job. Now that he’s paying more attention, he also notices a grocery delivery van parked up across the road as he’s leaving, which answers the question of how Phyllis handles the chores of daily living. He’s still not certain whether she truly never goes out, or whether she just prefers to stay in as much as possible, but a picture is starting to form in his head. It doesn’t make sense to him yet, but he means to understand it if he can. **  
**

When he comes home again in the early twilight, her curtains are drawn as always, outlined in gold from the lamp inside, and he strains his eyes looking for a shadow or a flicker of movement before giving up and going in. His own home is tidy, but it feels cold and too quiet, even after he’s switched on the heating for warmth and the radio for company. Why on earth did he say goodbye and leave without a way to contact her, he wonders, as he slops beans over toast for his tea. In the moment it had seemed silly--she was only a flight of stairs away, after all--but now he suspects he may have been an idiot. 

_It certainly wouldn’t be the first time_, he thinks, sitting down with his plate to start the evening’s marking and planning. At least there’s never a shortage of work to keep him occupied, which is probably true of Phyllis as well, up there in solitary splendour with her marvellous creations. 

Some time later, during a break at school, he considers looking her up on one of the computers, but gets as far as typing her name into the search box before closing the browser, ashamed of his own unseemly curiosity. He does, however, visit her Etsy shop, which seems safe enough since she mentioned it to him, and spends some time reading the brief About section and browsing the items on offer. All the prices look breathtakingly high to his uneducated eyes, but every review is glowing and several pieces are marked as sold, so people must be willing to pay. He thinks of placing an order, not least because it would give him an excuse to visit her again, but worries that it might make her uncomfortable and refrains. Anyway, he’d look ludicrous in a pair of plus fours or a tweed hacking jacket, no matter how exquisitely tailored. And where would he wear them? To playground duty? Not likely. 

On Friday, nearly a week after their second meeting, he’s on his way out early in the morning with an armload of supplies for a project he’s planning to do during the history lesson--they’re almost finished with Rome, thank goodness, although it’ll be a long time before he gets over Ollie Jacobs putting up his hand to ask why the Romans had sent legions of hares to defend their outposts. _I don’t think rabbits would be very good soldiers_, Ollie had opined, and Molesley had had to take a moment to compose himself before carefully writing out L-E-G-I-O-N-A-R-I-E-S on the white board. 

Preoccupied with the memory, and grinning to himself about it all over again, he’s just set foot on the pavement when there’s a sharp rapping behind him that makes him start and nearly drop everything he’s carrying. Turning around, he sees old Mrs Crawley at her bay window: she catches his eye and beckons to him, and hoping she won’t make him too awfully late, he backtracks and meets her in the foyer outside her front door. 

“Off to work are you, young man?” 

“Yes, Mrs Crawley.” 

“Hmm.” The old woman leans on her cane and eyes him as if she thinks his teaching job might be a front for something disreputable. “I’ve got a message for you before you go.” 

“You have?” Molesley shifts his box of nontoxic paints and precut sundial shapes to a less awkward position. He can’t imagine what message Mrs Crawley could possibly have for him, though he wouldn’t put it past her to be in touch with people at the highest levels of government. 

“Yes,” Mrs Crawley says. “It’s from Miss Baxter, above you.” 

This news makes Molesley’s heart leap so hard in his chest that he’s worried for a moment Mrs Crawley may have to administer CPR to him. “It is? Did she phone you or--?”

“I paid a call on her,” Mrs Crawley says, unruffled. “Yesterday afternoon. I visit quite often. It’s a kindness, and also she makes excellent gingersnaps. Ginger is very good for the digestion, you know.” 

“I’ve heard,” Molesley says weakly. He’s struck by the image of Mrs Crawley making her slow and shaky way to the fifth floor, climbing every step because there isn’t a lift in the building, driven by the implacable forces of her sense of duty and a craving for biscuits. And what does she mean by _a kindness_? Has it got something to do with the troubles Phyllis alluded to in passing? 

“Do you want your message, young Mr Molesley?” Mrs Crawley eyes him shrewdly. “You do, don’t you? I’ve seen you staring up at her windows like a great big mooncalf; don’t think I haven’t. You’re lucky she doesn’t seem to mind it.” 

“Er, yes,” Molesley says. The top of his head feels warm, as if his soul is trying to escape through it and flee his body. “I’d like that message very much, please and thank you.” 

“That’s better.” Mrs Crawley nods. “She says she’d like you to come for breakfast in the morning, if you’re not busy, which I doubt you are. Half past nine. She would have rung you up herself, she says, only she forgot to ask for your telephone number.” 

“You might have given it to her,” Molesley says. “I gave it to you when I first moved in, for emergencies.” 

“Breakfast invitations are not emergencies,” Mrs Crawley says primly. “And I certainly would not pass on private information that wasn’t mine to share.” 

This, Molesley thinks, is probably the truth. Mrs Crawley enjoys collecting information, but she’s more likely to hoard it for the sheer pleasure of knowledge than she is to gossip. It doesn’t matter, though. He’s too happy at the moment to be irritated with anyone, especially not the messenger of his good fortune.

“Would you--could you tell her I’ll be there? Are you going to visit again today?” 

“I am not,” Mrs Crawley says, “But because unlike the two of you, I always get a number, I will telephone her and convey your acceptance. In my day, we used to send a card with a proper response, but times change.” 

She shifts her weight on the cane and peers up into Molesley’s face, and unbelievably, he sees a twinkle in her ancient eyes. “I believe, Mr Molesley, that you have an assignation, or as you might prefer to call it, a _date_.” 


	4. Chapter 4

With twenty-four hours to prepare for his upcoming breakfast with Miss Baxter, Molesley immediately becomes incapable of thinking about anything else. He bumbles through his day at school, annoying his colleagues in the staffroom and forgetting to give out the homework he'd meant to set, and as soon as the last child has gone, locks up and leaves in a fog of anticipation and anxiety. He's been taught that it's polite to bring flowers when you're invited to someone's home for a meal, but turning up with a bouquet in hand sends a message that he isn't sure Phyllis will want to receive. Or will she?

Still thinking about it, he wanders into a supermarket and stares at bunches of pink sweetheart roses and bright, many-petalled chrysanthemums until he notices a girl in the store's uniform blouse eyeing him suspiciously, at which point he panics and grabs a stem of five hothouse tomatoes from a nearby display instead. He can't put them back because the girl is still watching, and it seems stupid to buy nothing but tomatoes, so he adds some milk and bread he doesn't need, pays for it all, and goes home feeling flushed with embarrassment.

_It's going to be a long night_, he thinks as he climbs into bed. 

The next morning he's dressed and ready by half past seven, a full two hours before he's due to be upstairs, and spends the time alternating between trying to read a book and looking out his kitchen window, watching as the world wakes up and starts going about its weekend business. Down below, he can see Mrs Crawley returning from her early-morning tour to the corner and back; she stops before going in to lean on her cane and scan the road with the air of a monarch surveying her domain, and he wonders if she's feeling pleased with her role in orchestrating his upcoming date. If it actually is a date, that is, and not just Phyllis looking for a polite way to thank him for his services as a deliverer of parcels and procurer of plumbing supplies.

At twenty-eight minutes past nine, he decides he can leave now if he climbs the stairs very slowly. As he's about to go, his gaze falls on the tomatoes, still sitting on the kitchen worktop, and on impulse he picks them up and takes them along. He hates tomatoes—that squidgy, seedy pulp in the middle gives him the shudders—but perhaps Phyllis likes them, and at least this way he won't arrive altogether empty-handed.

He knocks on her door, which is beginning to feel almost as familiar as the one to his classroom at school, and this time instead of saying 'Yes?' she says 'Joseph?' It calms him a bit to know she's really expecting him, and when she opens the door he can return her smile with no awkwardness or hesitation. She has on the same sort of soft, comfortable clothes he's seen her wear at both of their previous meetings, and he's glad he didn't do anything silly like wearing a suit, not that it hadn't crossed his mind at one point as he was lying awake before dawn.

"I'm not too early, am I?"

"Just in time. Come in and..." Phyllis catches a glimpse of the tomatoes in his hands, still attached to their stem, and trails off, forehead furrowing in surprise.

"Oh, these. Er, I had them just lying around, going to waste, and I thought I would see if you wanted them. I can't eat five tomatoes all by myself. Actually I can't eat even one tomato by myself. I don't really like tomatoes." Molesley can hear himself babbling, and with a herculean effort forces his mouth closed.

Phyllis looks as if she'd like to ask the logical question, which is _Well, why did you buy five of them, then_? but she gracefully receives the tomatoes from him as if they're the flowers he agonised over at the supermarket. "Thank you, that's very kind. I'm sure I can find a use for them. And don't worry, I haven't put any tomato in your breakfast."

She lets him in and closes the door, and he looks around, finding things much as they were on his last visit: the mannequin is wearing a gorgeous blue-and-green peacock dress instead of its black one, and there's a swath of gold silk spread out on the cutting table, but otherwise Phyllis's world seems to have carried on just as usual in his absence. He sniffs the air and smells rich, luscious cooking scents that make the flutters in his stomach shift from nervous to hungry.

"I ought to have asked Violet to ask you if there's anything you don't like," Phyllis says, hunting for a place to put the tomatoes. "I'm surprised she didn't already know, if I'm honest. She's a darling, really, but she's as nosy as anything. You don't mind mushrooms, do you?"

"Not at all," Molesley says. He's hovering, wondering if he ought to offer to help her in the kitchen, and if so, how to do it without making a nuisance of himself or getting in her way. "Thank you for the invitation, by the way."

"You're very welcome." She balances the tomatoes atop some apples in a bowl of fruit and turns to smile at him. "You might want to hold off on thanking me until you've tasted my cooking, though. I don't bother with it often, living on my own. I bake, if anything."

"I've heard."

"You have?" Phyllis looks alarmed for a moment and then relaxes. "Oh, Violet. Amazingly, she did leave some gingersnaps over when she came, so I'll give you a few to take home after, if you'd like. My grandmother used to bake them for me when I was tiny, and I always end up doing too many because it reminds me of her. You can sit down, I think the food's ready."

They sit at Phyllis's small table, laid with two places, and eat crisp buttery toast and baked eggs with mushrooms and leeks, and Molesley tries to find a way to ask more about her life—where she went to school, what work she gave up to become a seamstress, why she never seems to go anywhere—but keeps getting sidetracked, both by her rather fragile prettiness and by her almost supernatural ability to steer the conversation away from herself and onto him. The two factors work together against him, so he finds himself nattering on about the dullest parts of his own childhood and career while mesmerised by the line of her cheekbone, the little notch at the base of her throat, her clever fingers handling the silver. They've long since finished eating and are still sitting amongst the dirty plates and cups, talking, when Phyllis looks at the clock.

"Oh God, it's past noon. I hope you didn't have someplace else you needed to be?"

Molesley shakes his head. "Mrs Crawley will probably think I've died, though. She's probably got a secret camera trained on my front door to know when I come and go."

"I don't think she'll think you've died," Phyllis says, amused. "I'm sure she'll have some ideas about what you may have been doing in my flat for three hours, but death won't come into it."

"What do you—_oh._" Molesley is instantly mortified, because while it would be lying to say that his thoughts about Phyllis are entirely pure and innocent, he doesn't want Mrs Crawley speculating on them. In fact, he doesn't want to think about sex and Mrs Crawley at all, and would prefer to believe that she's never heard of it and doesn't know what it is. At the same time, he sees that this could be the moment to introduce the topic that's been burning in his mind for days now.

"About Mrs Crawley," he says.

"What about her?" Phyllis is starting to stack some of the crockery together in preparation to clear the table, and he rushes ahead before she can get too distracted.

"Well, I was wondering why you asked me to come to this breakfast—which has been amazing, by the way—through Mrs Crawley instead of asking me yourself. I know you didn't have my number, but I live just downstairs, and..."

"Oh, no reason really." Phyllis is bent over the plates and her hair has fallen forward to hide her face, but he can see her grip tighten on the mug she's holding until the tips of her fingers go white and bloodless. "She was visiting and it seemed convenient, and anyway, you got the message, didn't you?"

"Yes, but what if she hadn't visited? What would you have done then?" Molesley hesitates, wondering if he's about to spoil everything, but he's come this far and he needs to know. "It's only I've never seen you outside your flat, you have everything delivered to your door, even Mrs Crawley comes up to see you instead of the other way round and—I had a feeling that you might not go out at all, ever."

"Does it matter if I don't?" Phyllis still won't look at him. "Would it make you change your mind about being neighbours? Or friends?"

"Of course not," Molesley says. "I know we haven't known one another for very long, but I already think of you as a friend, and I hope to go on. Only if we're friends, and there's something I can help you with—well, I want to, that's all."

Phyllis puts the plates and mug in the kitchen sink, and then turns round again to face him. He can't see any anger on her face, just deep, deep exhaustion and sadness. "I appreciate it, Joseph, more than you can imagine, but it isn't something you can help with. No one can. I've tried."

"But what _is_ it? I don't understand."

"Oh, you'd recognise it if I told you the official name," Phyllis says, "but I don't want to do that, because people always think it's different to what it really is." She bites her lip. "Do you remember when I said I'd had some trouble a few years ago, and that was why I started sewing for a living?"

Molesley nods.

"Well, I had to make other changes in my life as well, because of what had happened. At first I couldn't drive a car anymore, and I wasn't so worried about that; it made sense given the situation. But then I couldn't take public transport because it was too closed in and there were too many people, and then I couldn't be in any sort of crowded place, like a shop or a restaurant, and then—" She lets out a sound that could be either a laugh or a sob. "It just crept up on me over time, like—like water rising and rising, until there was only one patch of high ground left where I could be safe, and you're standing on it with me, Joseph. As long as I'm in my own home, I'm all right. If I try to leave it..."

"What happens then?"

"Then," Phyllis says, "I drown."


	5. Chapter 5

Clearly feeling she's said too much, Phyllis tops up the kitchen sink with hot water and bubbles and becomes very intent on washing up. Her back is to him, rigid with tension, but Molesley doesn't know her well enough yet to know whether she wants comfort or to be left alone. Not that he's any good at comforting anyway, he thinks, watching her scrub at an eggy plate as if the fate of world hinges on getting it clean.

"Phyllis," he says.

"Yes?"

Molesley hadn't thought about what he was going to say beyond that, and nearly trips over himself trying to get words out. "I'm sorry. Truly I am. I didn't mean to upset you, I just—I wanted to know more about you. I understand now."

"No, Joseph, you really don't." Phyllis puts the plate down on the draining board, somewhat harder than necessary, and starts in on another one. "I know you mean well, but you can't possibly understand what it's like."

"Everyone's afraid of things," Molesley says. "Me more than most. I'm a nervous wreck most of the time, except when I'm around children. I can't talk to their parents without stammering. I practise how I'm going to say thank you to the bus driver. I bought a bunch of tomatoes I didn't want because I was embarrassed to put them back. Don't tell me you haven't noticed."

"I've noticed," Phyllis says. She abandons the rest of the plates and comes back to the table, drying her hands on a towel with a cross-stitched border of tiny yellow and red flowers. "Even before I'd met you, Violet described you to me as 'that twitchy young man,' so it didn't exactly come as a surprise. I think it's quite sweet, actually."

"Oh God, don't say that," Molesley says, anguished.

Phyllis laughs a little, which brings some of the colour back to her face, and takes her seat again with only a slight hesitation. 

"Not sweet like a fluffy puppy, Joseph, sweet like a nice man who worries about getting things wrong." The lightness fades from her voice, and her expression goes sober again. "But being anxious about tomatoes is not at all the same as what happens to me. It just isn't, and I don't want you to compare the two things, even in your own head."

"But—"

"No buts," Phyllis says firmly. "If we're going to be friends, you and I, you've got to believe me about this and not question it."

"Do you still want us to be friends?"

"More than anything," Phyllis assures him. "I don't often see the friends I had before...before all this happened, and except for Violet I don't often have a chance to meet the neighbours. Zara Amin used to come up now and then to look at my dresses, but I think her parents told her to stop. To be fair, if I had children I'm not sure I'd want them befriending the local recluse, either." There's a suspicious brightness in her eyes for the first time during the conversation, as if this may be the thing that finally pushes her over into tears, but she shakes it off and goes on. "Anyway, I do chat with people online, mostly through the sewing and vintage clothing communities I belong to, but I miss talking face to face, and I've enjoyed the talks we've already had very much. So if you don't mind..."

"I don't mind," Molesley says at once, and she lets out a breath of relief. "Only I don't like to think that you've just given up on ever overcoming whatever it is. Isn't there some sort of medication? Or therapy?"

"For heaven's sake, Joseph! What did I just say about questioning me?"

Molesley senses the ground he's gained slipping away and scrambles to recover it. "I know, and I swear these are the last ones I'll ask, but...isn't there?"

Phyllis presses her lips together until they nearly disappear. "Yes, there's medication. I take it. I also have therapy twice a week, and before you ask about that, I have it over Skype. I used to go to the therapist's office, but when things got worse, she found an alternative for me. So I'm doing what I can, and in the meantime I've made a life for myself here, inside these walls. It's a small one, but it's not so bad, is it?"

There are half a dozen immediate objections in Molesley's head, but he forces himself to ignore them and really think about what she's laid out for him. She has work she loves; a peaceful home; plenty of sunlight; possibly soon companionship in the form of his unprepossessing self. And really, what does he do that's so wonderful with his own freedom to go out into the world? An adventurous day for him is taking a different way home from work so he can get a curry, and even then he orders it mild. He's hardly in any position to judge her for wanting to feel safe.

He sees her watching him, half hopeful, half apprehensive, as if she's already expecting him to give the wrong answer. "No," he says. "It's not so bad."

"And you can cope with not asking questions?"

"Yes," Molesley says, hoping he sounds as definite and reassuring as he wants to. "But if one day you feel you can tell me more about—about the thing that made it all start—I'll be ready to listen."

"I appreciate it, Joseph, and if that day comes, I promise I'll tell you." She pauses. "Actually, there is something you can do for me today, if you'd like."

"Anything," Molesley says. "What is it?"

"Help me dry these dishes," Phyllis says, and hands him her towel.


	6. Chapter 6

As a lifelong reader, Molesley has often noticed the disparity between what happens in books and what happens in the real world. In a book, he thinks, Phyllis's revelation would straightaway have been followed by a sweeping statement like _And then everything changed. _In reality, what happens is this: he helps to dry the dishes, thanks her again for the meal, and returns to his own home, where he sits down and reads the Wikipedia entry on agoraphobia. He goes through it twice, carefully, then works his way through every one of the linked articles and scientific papers at the end, until the afternoon bleeds away and he's left in the cold glare of his computer screen.

A thirty- or even forty-year-old Molesley would have been able to go on, but fifty-year-old Molesley's lower back is loudly protesting being forced to sit in a desk chair for hours. He gives in to its complaints and gets up to hobble into the kitchen, feeling more informed and more confused at the same time. Everything he's learned fits with what Phyllis told him, but he still doesn't understand _why_. At some level, he supposes it doesn't matter, any more than it matters why someone's broken their leg or caught the flu—once it's happened, all they can do is try to recover from it—but he wants to know so desperately that he almost tries searching for her name again. All that stops him is his almost complete certainty that she'd see it as an unforgivable invasion of privacy. When she wants him to have the rest of the story, she'll share it with him. Or at least he hopes she will.

Molesley makes himself a cheese and onion sandwich—like Phyllis, he can cook but seldom bothers—and considers how best to distract himself for the rest of the evening. His dad is addicted to gardening shows, and during visits Molesley has found it dull but also relaxing to watch a television presenter tour the gardens of Italy or be instructed on the finer points of herbaceous borders. An hour or so of soothing boredom ought to do him the world of good, he thinks.

He turns over cushions with one hand while holding half of his uneaten sandwich with the other, searching for the remote control, but before he can find it he hears the buzz of an incoming message and promptly drops the sandwich down the back of the sofa, sending cheese-and-onion filling flying. He doesn't dare hope it's from Phyllis, even though he left his number with her this time before heading downstairs, but it is.

_I forgot to give you the gingersnaps. :(_

Molesley stares at these words in complete bafflement until he remembers that she'd promised him a sample of her baking to take home. There's a gob of mayonnaise on his fingers, and in a panic he wipes it off on his trouser leg without thinking so he can reply.

_That's all right. I'll try them next time._

He sends the message, starts to add _If there is a next time,_ then deletes it because it looks self-pitying, and he's been told that feeling sorry for himself is one of his less appealing qualities. He's not certain that he actually _has_ any appealing qualities, but there's no point calling attention to the ones he knows are actively undesirable.

A bubble with an ellipsis in it appears below his last. It hangs there on the screen for long enough to make him nervous before a new message appears:

_You could come up now if you like._

"If I like!" Molesley says aloud, already typing. "Miss Baxter, you have no idea."

_Are you sure? I don't want to be a bother._

_It's no bother._

_I'll be right there_, he sends, and then wonders if it sounds desperate and adds, _In just a bit, I mean. There's something I've got to do first._

This is not untrue, as he can see the contents of his sandwich oozing into the cracks of the sofa even as they're having this conversation. He tidies up as much as he can and dumps the remains into the kitchen bin along with the still-intact sandwich half, and in this way succeeds in making a respectable ten minutes pass before he's outside Phyllis's door for the second time in twelve hours. It feels different up here at night; the landing is deep in shadow, and he sees that the single fixture on the wall is half dead, cracked from age and thick with dust so the light barely seeps through. Why hasn't Phyllis asked to have something done about it? He ponders that until it occurs to him that she never comes in late from work or goes out before bed to buy milk for the morning, and with no visitors apart from delivery people and Mrs Crawley, both of whom operate only in the daytime, she probably never opens her door after sunset. She doesn't know about the lighting situation because she has no reason to. 

It's a small revelation, but it drives in the reality of her day-to-day life like a sharp spike to his chest. He must look shaken, because when she opens the door and sees him, her face crinkles up with surprised concern.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, just—it's awfully dark out here." Oh God, he thinks, now he sounds as if he's afraid of the dark, like an outsize, balding six-year-old. Why can't he just have an ordinary conversation without worrying about the way every word is coming across? They were talking like old friends earlier in the day, but every time he sees her, it's as if he has to start all over again at the beginning.

"Your light's on its last leg," he says by way of explanation.

Phyllis frowns up at it.

"It is, isn't it? I suppose someone ought to do something about that. Would you like to come in?"

"It's late," says Molesley. He does want to come in, desperately, but he also doesn't want to make a nuisance of himself; when he'd accepted the invitation, he'd imagined enjoying a brief glimpse of her at the door, receiving his biscuits and then being sent on his way, not having another full visit.

"It's quarter past seven," Phyllis informs him. "I'll be awake for hours still, working, and I know you don't go to bed until late either. A few minutes won't hurt." She hesitates. "And I'd like the company, so will you please?" 

Molesley can't argue with that, nor does he really want to, so he allows himself to be drawn in. Like the landing, the nighttime version of Phyllis's home is different to the daytime one, but the way it's changed is pleasing: the glass panels above their heads are black, as he'd imagined, but there are strings upon strings of tiny, softly glowing fairy lights stretched around the edges of the high ceiling, and the task light on her sewing table is switched on, throwing a bright circle onto the silk material he noticed earlier. An elaborate bird-of-paradise design is beginning to take shape there, etched in gold sequins and crystal beads, with a threaded needle marking the place where she stopped to answer the door.

"How do you know what time I go to bed?" he asks.

"I've seen you going out for walks at night." Phyllis nods towards the window, and all at once Molesley is overwhelmed with embarrassment, thinking of all the times he's stood on the pavement underneath. (_Staring up at her windows like a great big mooncalf_, Mrs Crawley's shaky old voice adds helpfully in his head.) He wonders how Phyllis can have observed him without being observed herself, but perhaps it shouldn't surprise him: she seems quite resourceful within her own domain, and he's been scolded many times in the past for not noticing things that are right in front of his nose.

"What's happened to your trousers?"

Molesley looks down and finds an unsightly stain where he wiped his mayo-coated fingers. 

"I had an accident with a sandwich," he confesses.

"Was it a greasy one?" Phyllis bends over, brushes her fingers across the spot and rubs them together to test, appearing not to notice that her touch on his thigh is about to fell him like a tree in a windstorm. "You ought to treat it right away or it'll set in. I've got some solvent cleaner that I use on the vintage fabrics; we can try that."

"Would I have to—er—" Molesley hunts for a delicate way to say this and can't think of one. "Take them off?"

"Well, you wouldn't _have_ to, but it would be best," Phyllis says. "Don't worry, you won't have to go home in your underpants. I've got loads of clothes you can wear. I buy them in lots from eBay and sell back what I can't restore or recycle." She straightens up. "Pull out the third bin from the left under the sewing table, and we'll have a look."

Obediently, Molesley hauls out the bin—it's on wheels to make it easy, and he takes a moment to admire the tidy efficiency with which Phyllis seems to do almost everything—and hovers at a distance while she searches through the contents.

"Here, these should fit you." She shakes out a pair of brown wool trousers and holds them up for his inspection; they smell musty, but look clean enough, and he takes them into the bathroom to change. While he's doing up the buttons (these particular trousers predate zips, according to Phyllis; they also itch, a fact he doesn't plan to share with her), his gaze falls on the cupboard under the sink, which reminds him of the morning they spent patching up the pipe together. He'd never have thought he'd be grateful for a leak in his ceiling, and yet here he is, blessing that broken pipe with all his heart. He hopes she feels the same way.

Dressed in scratchy wool that's older than his granddad, he opens the bathroom door and gives his own trousers to Phyllis, who whisks them away into the kitchenette and does something to them that involves a bottle of clear liquid and an old toothbrush. 

"The hem's coming out on the right cuff as well, did you know?" 

"No," Molesley says, watching her work. He sometimes irons a shirt when there's a school function to attend, but other than that he never thinks much about his clothes beyond washing them. "Maybe I ought just to buy new ones?"

"Don't be silly. I can fix it in five minutes once the stain's sorted." Phyllis finishes her scrubbing and drapes the trousers over one of the chairs where she and he sat to eat that morning. "There's no excuse for throwing away perfectly good things just because they're a little damaged. People never did in the old days. Of course they took their time and made clothes to last then as well." 

"So do you now."

"I do my best." She pulls a rueful face. "It's something I can control, you see. When I'm working on a piece, if it's not a bespoke one, I choose everything—the design, the fabric, the colours, the embellishments, even the strength of the thread I use. I decide whether to sew it on the machine or by hand. I decide how many hours to spend on it. I may not have a say in everything that happens to me, or how my mind and body react to it, but when it comes to my work I'm completely in charge, and I like to be thorough. Does that make sense?" 

Molesley nods, afraid to say a word. 

"I hoped it would." Phyllis comes closer and lays a hand on his shoulder. "Don't look so worried, Joseph. I didn't say I'd never talk about these things; I said not to ask me questions about them, and you haven't. You're doing everything just right." 

"That's not something I'm told very often," Molesley says. "Usually it's 'Joe, you idiot' and 'don't stuff it up this time.' The only people who don't think I'm completely useless are the kids I teach, and that's only because they're too young to know any better."

"I think the kids know more than you think," Phyllis says. 

Hand still on his shoulder, she reaches up swiftly and gives him a kiss that falls just at the corner of his mouth. It lingers long enough for him to feel the warmth of her lips, to breathe in the faint rosewater scent that floats around her all the time, and then it's over and she's gone, stretching to the top of the fridge for a white cardboard gift box.

"I almost forgot again." She smiles up at him, bright-eyed and a little flushed. "Your ginger biscuits." 

Dazed, Molesley examines the box and the shiny silver label that's pasted over the tucked-in flap. It's embossed with a name and design he recognises from her Etsy shop: Green Bough Vintage, with a wreath of leaves twining round the words. 

"I was expecting a paper plate and some clingfilm," he says. Can they really be having this conversation ten seconds after she kissed him? _Did_ she kiss him, or is he in bed and having some sort of fever dream? 

Phyllis shrugs, still smiling. "It's just habit, packaging things up nicely. Anyway, you certainly don't deserve any less than my customers do." She reaches out and taps the top of the box with a neat, short fingernail. "Eat them tonight, before they go stale, and you can tell me how you liked them when you come back to collect your trousers. They'll be all washed and dried and mended by tomorrow afternoon, and it's Sunday, so there'll be plenty of time to talk then, won't there?" 

"Yes," Molesley says, "I suppose there will." 


	7. Chapter 7

It rains that Saturday night, and Molesley hears every drop, having found sleep elusive again after the sudden development in his relationship with Phyllis. He is not, thank God, completely inexperienced, but the last time anything like this happened to him was several years ago—more like a decade, if he's honest—and he suspects he's forgotten everything he ever knew. He feels seventeen, and not in a good way; in an overheated way that he remembers as the precursor to fumbling and embarrassment.

Maybe it was just an impulse, he thinks. Maybe she didn't mean anything by it. Maybe it won't happen again.

_Maybe pigs will fly, Molesley_, his inner Mrs Crawley says dryly. She may be a figment of his imagination, but he knows she's right. Phyllis may have been given to impulsive acts at some point in her mysterious past, but the Phyllis he's known for the last month is a cautious and deliberate person. If she kissed him, she meant it. And he _wants_ her to have meant it, doesn't he? Of course he does.

As he's missed his usual evening walk, he gets up early and goes out for a morning one instead, with the hood of his bright blue waterproof parka pulled up against the last scattered showers. The leaves are nearly all off the trees now, lying in soggy piles that make him nostalgic for October's gorgeous colours. He spots a single red one still clinging to a twig and plucks it, thinking perhaps he'll give it to Phyllis as a token of the outside world and the changing seasons. It's no bouquet of flowers, but after the tomatoes, he's pretty sure she'll take it in stride.

On his way back, he catches up with the real, non-imaginary Mrs Crawley just as she rounds the corner and starts on the homeward leg of her own walk. Her rubber-tipped cane looks to be a match for the wet pavement, but he offers her his arm for support anyway, and she takes it as if such courtesies are only to be expected. She feels like nothing more than a bundle of frail bird bones and dry parchment skin held together by her coat, but there's steel in her grip and a glint in her eye as she peers up at him.

"How was your rendezvous with Miss Baxter?"

"We had a very nice meal."

"Mmm." Mrs Crawley stumps along a few more steps. "And a nice visit later in the evening too, I'm sure."

Molesley's face heats up to near blast-furnace levels in a flash. "Yes, but how do you—"

"A lady never reveals her sources."

"That's journalists, actually," Molesley points out.

"Is it? Slow down, young man, I can't keep up with this breakneck pace. Anyway, you did have a good time."

"Well, yes," Molesley says. He's already had to shorten his stride to half its normal length to accommodate her, but does his best to comply. The entrance of number 39 is just visible in the distance. At this speed, they may get there in time for Christmas. "I did."

"You didn't stay all night though," Mrs Crawley observes.

This nearly makes Molesley trip over his own feet and take her down along with him, which would surely be the end of at least one of them. "I wasn't invited!" he says hotly. "And if you don't mind me saying so, I don't think Miss Baxter would like us talking about that."

Mrs Crawley lobs that one right back over the net at him. "Wouldn't she?"

Here Molesley realises he's been bested. He doesn't really know how Phyllis would feel about this conversation at all, and it occurs to him that she may even be Mrs Crawley's source; it's not hard to imagine the old lady somehow hearing doors opening and closing through all the floors between them and then phoning Phyllis up for a late-night chat. He also suspects he's being pumped for information himself. Well, two can play at that game.

"Can I ask you a question, Mrs Crawley?"

"I thought you were a teacher, young man. _May_ you ask." Mrs Crawley thumps the cane down for emphasis. "You may, and then I shall decide whether or not to answer."

"Do you know what happened to her? I'm not asking you to tell me what it was," he adds hurriedly. "I promised I'd wait for her to tell me, and I will. I just want to know if anyone else on earth knows."

The gnarled old fingers tighten on his arm. "Yes, Molesley, I know. And she didn't tell me straightaway either, so don't feel slighted by that. She already trusts you a great deal; don't let her trust be misplaced, and you'll find out all there is to know soon enough." They're finally at the front of the building, but Mrs Crawley keeps holding onto him. "And remember, what happened isn't the important bit really."

"What is the important bit?"

"For her to be able to live with it, of course," Mrs Crawley says. She turns him loose and mounts the three shallow steps on her own, as if she'd never needed his help at all. Probably she hadn't, Molesley reflects.

At the top, she stops and looks down at him. "You're visiting again today?"

"Yes," he admits. There seems no point in trying to keep anything from the spy captain of Downton Road. Not for the first time, he wonders just how old Mrs Crawley really is; she can't be old enough to have worn Phyllis's designs when they were originally in fashion, which would make her a world record holder, but he wouldn't be surprised if she'd been born when a motorcar was still a relative novelty.

"Good," Mrs Crawley says. "She's been much happier lately, having a friend. And I dare say you have been as well, haven't you?"

He nods, and Mrs Crawley smiles, satisfied.

"Just as I thought. Keep it up, Molesley. The two of you are good for each other. Oh, and one other thing."

"What's that, Mrs Crawley?"

"If you're invited to stay the night, for goodness' sake _say yes_."

She goes in through the front door just as Zara and Mohammed Amin come out, dressed in identical yellow rain jackets and carrying their scooters. They gaze at Molesley curiously and then unfold the scooters and roll away, wheels thumping over the cracks in the pavement. When they've gone, he looks down and sees he's still holding the red autumn leaf in one hand. He puts it in his pocket and follows Mrs Crawley inside. 


	8. Chapter 8

Having started his day so early, Molesley finds himself with too much time to kill. When there's nothing left to tidy up, he makes his weekly telephone call to his father, listens to updates about the garden and the neighbours and the dogs (his father's springer spaniels, Rex and Rover, live like a pair of kings), and delivers his own report on his work and the rain and how the insulation in his new flat is proving against the colder temperatures. He's bursting to wax on about Phyllis to anyone who will listen, but holds back, thinking he'll save that bit of news for later. His dad will be pleased, but he'll also suggest that Molesley bring Phyllis along the next time he visits, and the complications of such an invitation seem like too much to explain at the moment.

Thinking of Phyllis reminds him that apart from a vague reference to afternoon, they never agreed on a time for him to come back and see her again. He's certain she'll let him know when she's prepared to receive him, but as noon comes and goes, he begins to wonder if she's waiting for him to contact her instead. Not wanting to seem overeager, he has his second shower of the day—lucky there are no leaks in _his_ pipes, he thinks, or he'd have flooded out the Amin family below him by now—and then spends some time trying to comb his hair in a way that makes it look thicker before giving up and sending her a message. He's humming to himself under his breath as he types.

_When should I come up?_

He's not expecting Phyllis to answer instantly, but he's surprised at how long it takes before a reply comes up on the screen. When it does, it's only half of one, as if her thought's been cut off in the middle.

_I don't_

There's an even longer pause, and then more text appears.

_I don't think you ought to _ _come today after all Joseph_

The words land on him like a series of blows, each one somehow striking all the soft and vulnerable parts of him at once. Cold seizes him from head to foot, as if he's strayed onto thin ice and plunged into the depths of a frozen lake. Or has he been out on the ice all this time without knowing it, believing like a fool that he's safe, that she really wants him around? She couldn't really change her mind about seeing him so suddenly, could she?

_What's happened? Is something the matter? Is it— _Quickly, he backtracks and erases the last two words before saying_ Is it something I've done? _He's not certain he's ready to hear the answer to that.

_Nothing_

_Not feeling well_

Molesley stares at the screen, trying through his panic to grasp the undercurrent he can sense beneath these disjointed messages. They stand in such glaring contrast to the few communications he's received from her previously that he hardly knows what to think, beyond trying to repair things if he can.

_Do you need anything? Medicine or...?_

_It's not that. I'm having a bad time, that's all. It happens now and then. I'll be fine tmrw_

_What sort of bad time_, Molesley starts to ask and then catches himself before sending it as he realises what she means. It doesn't make sense to him—she's said herself that she feels safe in her own home, and she's not been out of it that he knows of—but he's not about to argue.

_I could come up and keep you company anyway, _he types. _I don't mind._

_But I mind_

These three words sit on the screen, stark and brusque, for what feels like a hundred years. Then the grey bubble with its ellipsis pops up, and she adds, _It's not you, Joseph. _A pause, then: _Well it is a little. __I don't want you to see me this way._

_Please let me come, Phyllis. I won't ask any questions. I just want to know you're all right._

_NO_

_I can't_

He thinks that's the end of it, that she's put her phone down or switched it off and is ignoring him, but just as he's about to give up, another message appears.

_I did finish your mending before. It's outside my door. Sorry I can't please don't be angry_

Molesley forces himself to wait half an hour, then another, to see if she'll say any more, but finally gives up and climbs the stairs to the landing, less gloomy at midafternoon than it was last night. There's a brown paper bag with twisted raffia handles waiting there, as promised, and he picks it up and finds his trousers inside, clean and folded as if he's just bought them brand-new from a shop. Phyllis's door is shut up as tight a bank vault, with no hint of any movement or sound behind it. A casual passerby might think no one lived there at all, Molesley thinks. He's never wanted anything more in his life than to knock on that blank unfeeling barrier; hammer away until she lets him in and he can prove that he's willing to be there for her bad times, whatever they may look like. But he's sworn not to press her, and remembering the plea in her last message, he draws a deep breath and turns to go home instead.

Under the bright overhead lights of his own kitchen, Molesley unfolds the trousers; looks for the oily stain and can't find a trace of it; turns the cuff out to examine the tiny, even, all-but-invisible hand stitches she's used to do the repair. Even in the midst of his hurt and worry for her, he can't help marvelling at how good she is at her work. Self-deprecation aside, he knows he's a generally competent teacher with occasional moments of both failure and brilliance, but on his best day he's never come close to this level of skill. He's seen how neat-handed Phyllis is in small tasks and can easily extrapolate it into deftness with needle and thread and scissors, but then he imagines how upset she must have been for those talented hands to struggle so much over typing out a few messages to him, and shudders. He doesn't want to think about that at all.

His stomach's still in knots and he can't face dinner, so he spends the rest of the afternoon and evening answering emails from his pupils' parents—not at all the pleasant time he'd been anticipating, he thinks dejectedly as he presses Send on a message about Ollie Jacobs' spelling difficulties—and goes to bed early. There he lies flat on his back with his hands folded across his middle, listening for any noise from above, but there's not so much as a footfall. Maybe Phyllis is asleep? He hopes she is. At least it would be a reprieve from whatever private horrors she's grappling with.

In a moment of desperation, he considers telephoning Mrs Crawley, but Mrs Crawley has already weighed in with her advice and he knows she'll say the same thing as the version of her in his mind: _Be patient, Molesley. Don't let her trust be misplaced._

It feels like the hardest thing he's ever done, but he's willing to try. Before he finally falls asleep himself, he sends Phyllis one final message: _It's all right. I know you'll tell me more when you're ready. _The rest will have to wait until they're face to face again.


	9. Chapter 9

After a night full of unsettling dreams punctuated by groggy awakenings, Molesley drags himself through his getting-ready-for-work routine, then out into a morning that’s unexpectedly white with frost. Phyllis’s window is shrouded in mist and the narrow gap around her curtains is dark, revealing nothing to his anxious eyes. Even the usually indomitable Mrs Crawley seems to have admitted defeat and decided to stay in. 

It’s so quiet that he wonders for a moment whether everyone else in the world might have vanished overnight, but then the twins emerge from the building together, sans scooters for once, as if they’ve just received their cue to enter this silent and empty stage. They’ve exchanged their yellow rain jackets for matching black duffle coats—Molesley has noted before that Mrs Amin is a stickler for ensuring her children are wrapped up warmly—and are toting school bags, though in this area Zara has asserted herself with blue to her brother’s black. 

“Good morning,” Molesley says as they reach the foot of the steps. They look startled at being addressed by an adult, and especially by Molesley, who rarely addresses anyone, but Zara rallies and gives him a “Morning” in return before both twins turn in the direction of their school, which is the opposite way to his. 

“Zara,” he calls, and Zara turns back again. 

“Can you tell me—do you ever go up to see Miss Baxter, on the fourth floor?”

“Miss Baxter? I used to. She has dresses with beads and sparkles and things all over, like in an old photo or a film. I got to try one of them on once.” Zara’s face, perplexed at first, has gone soft and dreamy with the memory as she speaks. “It almost fit me, too. She said it was because people were smaller a hundred years ago.”

This is the longest exchange Molesley has ever had with one of the twins, who are usually whizzing by too fast for conversation. He’s encouraged by it, not least because it matches what he’s already heard from Phyllis. It isn’t that he’s disbelieved her, but it’s good to have confirmation. 

“I’m sure Miss Baxter was right,” he says, and Zara smiles, cautiously. “One other thing. You said you used to visit her. Why don’t you anymore?” 

Zara’s dark hair is done in two thick plaits that just touch her shoulders; she pulls one of them around to her mouth now, and nibbles at the end of it in a way he expects she’s been told not to. “Our mum said not to keep going up and bothering her. She said if Miss Baxter wanted to see me, she’d come down herself, but she never did.” She shrugs and lets the plait drop. “I didn’t think I was being a pest, but maybe I was.” 

At this point, Mohammed tugs urgently at his sister’s coat sleeve, and she shares a glance with him, then nods as if he’s spoken. 

“Sorry, Mr Molesley, we’ve got to go. All _ right_, Mo. I’m coming.”

The twins resume their interrupted journey, disappearing into the fog before they’ve gone more than a few steps, and leaving Molesley alone again. He knows he’s on the verge of being late as well, but he lingers just a little longer, hoping for some sign of Phyllis before he goes. Even a message relayed by Mrs Crawley would be welcome at the moment, he thinks, as long as it relieved some of his worry about her. 

As he’s checking for the twentieth time to make certain he hasn’t missed a notification, he hears an approaching car in the distance and then sees its headlamps like a pair of yellowish animal’s eyes, dim at first, but growing brighter as they approach. He watches it pass—it’s a nondescript Volkswagen Golf, like hundreds of others he sees every day—and as the taillights disappear, he glances up at the window just in time to see Phyllis’s curtain falling back into place, as if she’s let it go in a hurry to avoid being caught. This is so shocking to Molesley that he starts to call out to her, forgetting the early hour and the quiet road and the high likelihood of embarrassment for both of them, but his throat locks up and he can’t get a sound out. 

Heart thudding, he waits a minute, then another, but nothing happens except for his temporary paralysis slowly abating until he feels almost normal again. Eventually, the man who lives at number 41 comes out, wearing a larger version of the twins’ coats, and gives Molesley an enquiring and rather disapproving look before starting to scrape the frost away from his car’s windscreen. 

_ Mooncalf _, Molesley thinks, and takes himself off to work. 

He gets through that day by reassuring himself that Phyllis is bound to contact him later, perhaps in the evening when she knows he’s free. To make certain she has plenty of time to do it, he goes straight home without stopping along the way, and eats a sandwich—ham and pickle this time instead of cheese and onion—with the phone close to hand. But he doesn’t hear from her that evening or the next, and he doesn’t see Mrs Crawley either, although he knows she hasn’t died (morbid, perhaps, but also a real possibility considering her age) because her newspaper is missing every morning. Unlike Phyllis, Mrs Crawley is not one to get her contact with the outside world through the Internet, although Molesley allows that she may be more familiar with it than he knows. He’s quite sure that better men have underestimated Violet Crawley at their peril. 

On Wednesday morning, he’s in front of the bathroom mirror, shaving, when he hears the slow, unmistakable thump of a rubber-tipped cane out in the hallway and promptly slices his chin open. The razor goes tumbling into the sink as he bolts for the front door, one hand pressed to the stinging cut, but by the time he pulls the door open, there’s no one to be seen. Even the sound of the cane has stopped, though he’s sure he ought to be able to hear it farther down in the stairwell as Violet makes her way to the ground floor. He envisions her doing a parkour leap over the railing, or perhaps ducking into the empty flat opposite the Amins’ to hide from him, and realises he’s being silly; she’s probably just popped in to see Mrs Amin and have a rest on her way down. 

Maybe he can find out from Zara what they talked about, he thinks, going back inside to stick some toilet roll to his wound. He suspects it’s a bit desperate to rely on a twelve-year-old as an informant, but it worked for Sherlock Holmes, and if Zara is anything like the children in his class, she won’t need much urging: he’s been told many things, unprompted, that he’s sure his pupils’ parents wouldn’t want him to know. He’s still considering this, and trying to pull his jumper over his head without dislodging the toilet roll, when his phone buzzes with a message that he thinks is probably a school announcement. 

It isn’t. It’s from Phyllis.


	10. Chapter 10

_ Have you got a moment to talk? _

_ Of course_, Molesley types with clumsy nervous fingers. He looks at the clock, sees he has ten minutes to finish washing and dressing and be on his way, and decides he doesn’t care if he’s late, or indeed if he goes to work at all. Then the phone vibrates in his hand, and he clears his throat and answers her call. 

“Violet came up to see me,” Phyllis says. Her voice is frayed, as if she’s recovering from a long illness, but he’s so glad to be speaking to her at all that he barely notices. 

“I know. I heard her going back down again.” 

“She said you’d been worried and I asked her to tell you I was fine, but she wouldn’t have it. She said it was my responsibility to tell you myself, and she was right, so here I am, telling you.” She sighs, a soft, weary thread of a sound. “I really am sorry to have upset you, Joseph. I never meant to. I just—” 

“It’s all right.” 

“It isn’t, but thank you for saying so.” Through the phone he hears a chair scraping across floorboards, and above his head, the same noise, muffled. “I’d like to try to make it up to you though, if you’ll let me. Could you come up for a visit later, when you’ve finished work?” 

“I’ll come right now if you want me to.” Molesley plucks the tissue off his cut, hoping he’s not starting it bleeding again. “I’ll stay at home today. I’ll say I’m not well, or there’s been an emergency—” 

Tired as she sounds, Phyllis still has more than enough resolve to call this out for the foolishness he knows it is. 

“No you won’t, Joseph. Go to work, and I’ll see you this afternoon. I promise to let you come this time, no matter what sort of state I’m in.” 

“Are you—” Molesley realises he’s about to ask _Are you in a state_ and changes it to the first polite thing he can think of instead. “Are you feeling better?” 

“Much better.” 

“Really?” 

“Really and truly. Now go on.” 

Molesley goes, certain that he’s going to be useless for yet another day, but immediately after morning break, when everyone is still settling in for their next lesson, a quiet little girl called Aurora unexpectedly turns around and punches Ollie Jacobs in the face for kicking the back of her chair one too many times. In the chaos that follows, he’s thoroughly distracted from everything Phyllis-related, and hardly thinks of it again until it’s time to send the children home. When he does remember, he’s expecting the familiar old nerves to settle in, but discovers that all his anxiety is for her, not for himself. He has no idea at all what to anticipate when he arrives at her door, so it’s a relief when she opens it looking more or less whole, though he can see the marks of fatigue on her face and the delicate skin drawn more tightly across her cheekbones. 

“I haven’t brought tomatoes this time,” he says, holding out his empty hands to show her. It’s only a small joke, but it has the reassuring effect he intended: Phyllis smiles, then reaches out and takes both of his hands in hers. She’s wearing grey fingerless gloves—a thin, fine knit material that he doesn’t know the name of, but is certain she does—and he brushes his thumb across one of them. 

“What are these for?” 

“I can’t do embroidery when my hands are cold.” She’s still holding onto him, which is perfectly fine with Molesley. He thinks he could stand here clasping her hands until the next ice age comes along. “I’m behind on a commission and I’ve got to start in on it again this evening, so I’m keeping warm until then. Speaking of which, come in and get warm yourself. I know what it’s like outside. I’ve been watching people walking past, all wrapped up with their breath like smoke.” 

She lets Molesley go, and he follows her into a space that feels familiar and strange at the same time. The lamp over her sewing table is switched off, but the gold silk is still spread across the surface, with the needle stuck into the bird of paradise at the same spot, proving that she hasn’t touched her work at all since he was last here. Through the narrow gap in her bedroom door, he can just see her bed heaped haphazardly with pillows and a tumbled, unmade mess of duvet. The rest of the flat is tidy, but in a way that feels surface-level and hasty, as if she’s swept through in a hurry to make it presentable for him. 

“Would you like anything to drink? Eat?” 

Molesley shakes his head. “Just to talk. Mrs Crawley was right, you know. I’ve been worried half to death for you. That message you sent was awfully sudden.” 

“I know. I should have said more, but it was all I could do just then.” Phyllis’s face is achingly vulnerable, full of pleading for him to understand. “I hoped I’d be all right the next morning, but I wasn’t, and by the time I’d started to feel better I was embarrassed at the way I’d behaved, and I thought—”

“Thought what?” 

“That it might have been too much for you,” Phyllis says. “It’s one thing to know about all this, but actually seeing what it’s like, even from a distance—I wondered if you’d want to deal with the bother.”

“It’s not a bother,” Molesley says firmly. “Only I’m still not sure what happened really. I thought as long as you stayed at home, you were all right. You didn’t try to go out, did you?” 

“No, it wasn’t that.” Phyllis bites her lip. “Come and sit down.” 

The grey late-afternoon light in the room is fading, but she leaves the lamps off, as if she’d rather have this conversation in the near-dark, and joins him on the sofa where they sat during his first visit weeks ago.

“You’ve done some reading about my problem, haven’t you?” 

“Well, yes,” Molesley admits. “A few articles and web sites and things.” 

“It’s all right. I thought you would have, being a teacher. So you know that agoraphobia...” Phyllis hesitates a little over the word, but goes on. “Agoraphobia is related to panic disorder in general. Not everyone who has panic attacks is agoraphobic—in fact most of them aren’t—but all agoraphobics have panic attacks, and the two things are intertwined. Agoraphobia causes panic attacks, but panic attacks also feed into agoraphobia and make it worse. Are you with me?” 

Molesley nods. 

“That’s good. So what I developed after—after the thing that happened wasn’t agoraphobia to start with, it was a panic disorder. Every time I had a panic attack, it formed an association with whatever I was doing at the time, so if I’d been waiting for a train, then the next time I went into a train station, I’d feel the possibility of another panic attack pressing down, crushing me, and it wouldn’t let up until I left. And trying to avoid all the places that made me feel that way is how I’ve ended up here.” She draws a deep breath, as if proving to herself that she can. “But the underlying disorder; that’s still there, and there are still things that can set it off. And that day when I told you not to come, I’d had an email from someone that started me down the spiral.” 

Molesley watches her expression in the dying light, wanting to ask a thousand questions, but waiting for her to offer him the information instead. Blurting things out has always been his weakness, and the effort of holding back is making him perspire. But he does his best, and in a moment Phyllis continues. 

“I suppose you’re thinking it must have been a person who had something to do with it all, and you’d be right.” She wraps her arms protectively around herself, a gloved hand on each elbow. “I haven’t seen or heard from him in three years,”

“Him?” Molesley isn’t proud of the hot flush of jealousy that races through his body at this. He knows perfectly well that Phyllis is an adult who’s lived at least half a lifetime before meeting him, and it only makes sense for her to have had relationships, and yet—

“Don’t worry, Joseph, he isn’t someone I want to speak to ever again. And he ought to have known that, but he contacted me anyway, and it was as if he’d broken into my home, where I’m meant to be safe. I knew he must have found me through my Etsy shop, because it was the email address I use for customers, but I started to wonder if he knew where I lived as well, and would turn up here on my doorstep. I'm sure he doesn't really, but I can't think about it for too long even now.” 

“I’d have come and stayed with you if you needed me to,” Molesley says. 

“I know you would have, but I couldn’t let you do that.” She stands up—a movement he can feel more than see in the thick velvety dusk—and switches on the task light over her sewing table, then the fairy lights around the ceiling. In their glow, the room looks as warm and friendly as it did on his previous visit, which makes her rejection of his offer feel even more jarring.

“Why couldn’t you?” he asks. 

“I said I was embarrassed, didn’t I?” Phyllis sits down next to him again. “That’s not the only reason, though. You’re a kind person, and it would be easy for me to start depending on your kindness too much, and that wouldn’t be good for either of us in the long run. I’ve survived this long by staying as self-reliant as I can, within my limitations, and I mean to go on that way.” She takes one of his hands again, twining her fingers into his. “But just because I don’t want you to be my nursemaid, it doesn’t mean I don’t want you at all.” 

“Do you?” 

“I do,” Phyllis says, and kisses him. It’s not the rushed half-kiss she gave him along with his ginger biscuits, but a real one that lasts, and becomes a second one that melts into a third, until he’s brave enough to wrap his arms around her. She’s thin and lithe and soft all at the same time, exactly the way he imagined she’d feel (not that he plans to tell her how many times he’s imagined a moment like this, at least not yet) and he’s afraid he’ll hold her too tightly, but he can’t let go. In the end, it’s Phyllis who does it, drawing back without leaving his embrace entirely, and tilting her head as if to read his face. 

“You can stay with me now, if you like,” she says.

"But you said—"

"That wouldn't have been my choice. This is." She touches his cheek. "Stay here, Joseph, for a while." 

“How long is a while?”

“It varies,” Phyllis says. “But in this case I think it might be until sometime tomorrow morning.” 

Molesley's been proud of himself for not saying anything awkward or stupid thus far, but the overwhelming distraction of Phyllis in his arms weakens his resolve, and he blurts out the first thing that comes to mind. 

“I thought you had work to do,” he says, and she laughs. 

“Joseph, when you’re invited to spend the night, the polite thing to do is say yes.” 

“That’s what Mrs Crawley told me.” 

“Do you really want to talk about Violet right now?” 

“Not at all,” Molesley says, and pulls her back in for another kiss.


	11. Chapter 11

“Joseph.” 

“Five more minutes,” Molesley groans, eyes squeezed shut. 

“It's getting late.” 

“Three more minutes.” 

“Two minutes and then I pull all the covers off,” Phyllis says, but instead of making good on her threat, she crawls in next to him and snuggles down until she’s nearly invisible. Disappointingly, she’s bundled in what feels like a fluffy dressing gown; he fumbles around and tries undoing its tie belt by feel, but the knot is pulled as tight as one of the corsets he sometimes suspects Mrs Crawley of wearing. 

“Why are you all wrapped up?” 

“I got up to make coffee." Phyllis catches his wandering hands and replaces them at his sides. "Wake up and you can have some before you go downstairs.” 

“I’m awake,” Molesley says, more or less truthfully.

"You said that an hour ago." 

"This time I mean it." Now that he's mostly conscious, he can in fact detect a rich, tantalising note of fresh coffee in the air, taking him back in a flash to the breakfast they shared less than a week ago. “But I don’t see how you can just send me off like that after—you know.” 

“You've got work and so have I," Phyllis says, and pushes the duvet back just enough for him to see her ruffled hair and bright brown eyes over its edge. “That commission will never be finished if I keep getting distracted.” 

“You invited me to distract you,” Molesley points out. “Twice.” 

“I did, didn’t I,” Phyllis says, and even though her face is still half hidden, he can hear the smile in her voice. “And I’m not a bit sorry, but you will be if you’re in trouble for not turning up to teach your twenty-seven little hooligans, so off you go until this afternoon.” She sits up, leans over him and gives him a kiss that takes the sting out of the words. “The mugs are in the corner cupboard in the kitchen, and I gathered up your clothes and put them just over there, on the chair.” 

“You’re not going to watch me get dressed, are you?” 

“It’s a bit late for modesty now, Joseph.” 

Molesley has to admit she’s right about that, so while he feels doughy and freckled and unfit in contrast to her, he collects the folded pile of his clothes—Phyllis has disappeared under the covers again and isn’t watching him after all, despite her teasing—and pulls them on quickly. It's warm and snug in the room, but outside the mist has rolled in again; through the thin curtains he can see chilly wisps of it drifting like ghosts around the windowpane. 

_ So this is what it looks like from the inside _, he thinks, remembering how he’d stood on the pavement gazing up, shut out and yearning. He’d never truly expected to be on this side of the glass, and certainly not under these circumstances, but he is. He doesn’t think he even acquitted himself too badly the previous night: the first time there hadn’t been a spare moment to worry or be nervous, and by the second go-around he’d remembered a few things and done well enough. Still doing up buttons, he crosses to the window and peers out through the fogged and dewy glass, for a fanciful moment wondering whether he'll see his own upturned face below, but of course there's nothing: no past Joe, no Mrs Crawley, no twins, not even the man from number 41, who will soon be departing on the morning trek to wherever he spends his days.

"What's out there?" Phyllis has slipped out of bed and come up behind him, looking pale and pretty but anxious in the diffuse white light. "Do you see something?"

"Not a thing," Molesley says. 

He follows her into the other room, receives a mug of coffee from her and watches her pour one for herself, adding milk but no sugar. 

“Are you going to be all right today?

“I’ll be fine,” Phyllis assures him. “Embroidery’s almost like meditation when it’s repetitive, and I’ve got four of those birds to do before I can make a start on the leaves and vines that go around them. I’ll turn on the radio and get stuck into it, and I won’t so much as look up for hours.” 

“What if you get another message from the person who upset you?” 

“It won’t matter, because I won’t open it.” Setting her mug aside, she links her arms around his waist and squeezes, surprisingly strong despite her slenderness. “I’m happy right now, Joseph, not just content, but really happy for the first time in a long time. I won’t have anything from the past spoiling it, even at a distance. Go on and don’t worry about me.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Of course I’m sure.” She straightens out his collar, smooths down the front of his shirt with deft, gentle hands. “Good lord, Joseph, haven’t you got any shirts that aren’t missing buttons?” 

“It had all its buttons when I put it on yesterday,” Molesley says. “I think someone may have taken it off me a bit too exuberantly. Can’t imagine who.” 

Phyllis laughs, clearly not ashamed in the slightest. “All right then, I’ll look for the button while you’re gone and sew it on when you come back. Go put on another one, and don’t get caught on your way down. You look exactly as if you've been doing what you've been doing, and I know Violet would be over the moon about it, but I’m not so sure about Mr and Mrs Amin or whoever’s living on the second floor these days.” 

“No one’s living there,” Molesley says. “There were a couple of girls in it when I first moved in, but they’ve been gone for at least a month now. It’s just sitting there, gathering dust. I’d have thought Mrs Crawley would have reported on it to you. She did me. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Phyllis shakes her head, but her cheerful mood seems to have dimmed a little, like a shadow lingering as it passes over the face of the sun. “I like it better when every flat is filled, that’s all. I’m sure that’s why Violet didn’t say. It doesn’t matter, though. I’ve got you between me and the empty one, haven’t I? And on that note, you really will be late if you don’t go and get changed now. Come up as soon as you get in.” 

She draws him down and kisses him again, thoroughly, and then ushers him to the door.


	12. Chapter 12

The following week is dark and cold and pouring with rain, but it’s sunny and warm in Molesley’s heart as he splashes his way to school, listens to children read aloud, tells them not to run on the wet floors in the corridors. He makes Aurora write an apology letter to Ollie for clocking him during the chair-kicking incident, although privately he notes that it seems to have had a salutary effect on Ollie, who wasn’t badly hurt, but is still giving Aurora a wide, respectful berth as well as keeping his hands and feet to himself for the first time all year. 

In all his in-between moments, Molesley’s mind is on Phyllis. She’s been working feverishly on her embroidery during her days alone; every time he’s there, the vines and flowers have climbed farther up the silk, and she says she’ll be ready to sew the actual dress soon. This gives him an idea, and he pays a call on Mrs Crawley in her sitting room—stuffed with Victorian tables and sideboards and heavy with the smoky scent of Lapsang Souchong—and asks her if she’ll speak to Mrs Amin about letting Zara resume her visits. 

“You might speak to her yourself, Molesley.” Mrs Crawley offers him a gilt-rimmed china plate of biscuits that have clearly come from Phyllis’s kitchen. “I won’t always be here to carry your messages, you know.” 

“You’ll be more convincing than I will,” Molesley says ingratiatingly. 

“True,” Mrs Crawley says. “Very well, I shall ask Mrs Amin when I see her tomorrow. And in return, you can do something for her. I’m told that young Mohammed is having trouble with his maths and would benefit from a bit of private tuition. You can help him while his sister is perusing the delights of Miss Baxter’s haute couture.” 

Molesley can see his already limited spare time flying away, but yields. He’s taught beginning algebra in the past and knows a few tricks, and at least he and Phyllis will be together, even with the twins as accidental chaperones. She won’t let him spend every night with her, much as he’d like to—he doesn’t know whether it’s her insistence on maintaining a modicum of self-reliance, or some other reason he can’t understand—so he isn’t going to turn down any available moment. 

“All right,” he says. “Thanks very much, Mrs Crawley.” 

Mrs Crawley waves a dismissive hand to that and puts her teacup down precisely in its saucer with scarcely a clink. “I was brought up to do my duty, Molesley, and to be helpful when I can. Now, is there anything else? I telephone my son Robert every afternoon at this time, and he’ll be expecting my call.” 

“Oh, I didn’t know you had a son,” says Molesley, imagining with some trepidation what it must be like to be Robert Crawley. Phyllis wasn’t wrong about Violet’s kindness, but he very much doubts that she was the sort of mother to read bedtime stories and make a fuss over bruised knees, either. 

“One son and one daughter, in fact,” Mrs Crawley says, “and three granddaughters and four great-grandchildren, at least that I know of.”

“That you know of?”

“A long story, Molesley. I’ll let you know when I’ve spoken to Mrs Amin. Leave your cup and plate in the kitchen as you go.” 

Obediently, Molesley collects them, and then pauses, remembering something. “Mrs Crawley, do you know if anyone’s bought the empty flat on the second floor yet?” 

Mrs Crawley’s hand is already on the telephone receiver; she’s put her reading glasses on so she can see to press the buttons, and now she gazes at him over the upper rims with keen blue eyes that he expects were quite alluring in her long-ago youth. 

“I believe it’s being let out again. A pity those girls moved away; I liked them. Why do you ask?” 

“No special reason,” Molesley says. “Only I mentioned to Miss Baxter a few days ago that no one was living there, and it seemed to worry her. She said she likes knowing the building is filled and who with.” 

“Has she mentioned it again?” 

“No.”

“Hmm,” Mrs Crawley says. “Well, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. Go on, Molesley. I’m sure she’ll be waiting.” 

Molesley goes, stopping on the fourth floor to drop off the satchel he’s still carrying from his day at school, and is met at the door by Phyllis, who greets him warmly with a kiss and then pulls him by one hand to her sewing table to inspect the latest progress on the embroidery. He can see now the way it will fall when she cuts the fabric out along the pattern that’s already been marked, in a shower of silk with the crystalline birds perched lightly amongst their shimmering foliage. If only Mrs Crawley can talk Mrs Amin around, he thinks, Zara will be able to see it as well. It pleases him to think how much Phyllis will enjoy showing it to her, and he considers saying something, but decides to wait until things are more certain. 

“It’s beautiful.” He lifts her hand, which he’s still holding, and turns it over in both of his. “I could never make anything like that. I’ve always been clumsy. I had a job as a waiter once, in the summer, and it was all I could do to carry the trays without dropping them. I got sacked for spilling a dish full of aubergine lasagne down the front of someone’s white shirt.” 

“Lucky for you, in the long run,” Phyllis says. “You’re much better as a teacher. How were the children today, by the way?” 

“Wild. The playground’s flooded and they’ve been kept in for days. I foresee a mutiny if they’re not let out to run soon.” 

Phyllis lets go of his hand and gathers up a length of plain white cloth to spread over her work, which is something she’s begun doing to protect it as it gets closer to completion. There are calluses on her fingertips from hours of needlework; he's learned that she rubs them with olive oil and sugar every morning to soften them so they won’t snag the delicate silk, but it’s a constant battle. 

“It’s a funny thing, being kept in.” She smooths down the cloth. “At first it’s a novelty, like staying in on a wet afternoon to read books and drink hot chocolate. Then it starts to wear on you, looking at the same walls day in and day out until you want to scream, but it feels as if once you’d started, you’d scream and scream and never stop. And then it becomes just the way things are, so you can hardly remember what your life was like before, and you can’t imagine it ever being any other way. I think that’s why former prisoners want to go back to prison, some of them. They’ve got too used to it.” 

“Are you used to it?”

“Sometimes,” Phyllis says. “And sometimes I still want to scream. The days when I don’t want to frighten me more than the ones when I do. As long as I can still mind it, there’s a chance things might change. It’s when I stop minding it altogether that I’ll have to worry. Anyway, it’s all right for your little ones; they’ll be back out playing before they know it.” She switches off the sewing lamp and turns to him with a smile that he can tell is for his benefit. “I need a break from the needle. Let’s think of something else to do.” 

Molesley, who has been conducting some discreet research in his off hours, has plenty of ideas for other things they can do, and puts them into action so thoroughly that he ends up being invited to stay over again. He gets up on time in the morning; gives a very sleepy Phyllis a kiss on the forehead that mostly lands in her hair; washes and dresses himself; and heads out with a cheerful Friday feeling. Today Mrs Crawley will work her persuasive magic on Mrs Amin, and then it will be the weekend, and who knows what might happen then? Maybe he’ll even tell his dad about Phyllis at last when they speak on Sunday. 

Violet’s shades are still drawn when he reaches the street, and he seems to have beaten the twins as well, but the man from number 41 has just come down his own front steps, with his car keys and wallet in one hand and a bright orange insulated travel mug in the other. Even though it's still drizzling, his black hair is so smooth and immaculate that the raindrops just seem to slide away without leaving him mussed at all. He gives Molesley his usual appraising look and then for the first time, he nods, making Molesley abruptly anxious that he might be called upon to say something—he’s been feeling more confident lately, but it hasn’t translated to wanting to have unexpected conversations with strangers. But Number 41 doesn’t seem interested in chatting; he passes by at a polite distance, and as he does, Molesley sees that the wallet in his hand has a police crest and braille bar on its front flap. 

_ That explains a lot _, he thinks, watching Number 41 rest his mug on top of his car, open the door, and toss the wallet in before collecting the mug again and settling in for his commute. It doesn’t help his nerves to have realised what Number 41’s job is—Molesley has always had a secret fear of being arrested, despite never having committed an offence worse than dropping the occasional sweet wrapper—but it makes sense. 

There’s no point discussing this news with Mrs Crawley, who surely already knows and probably has Number 41 on speed dial, but he thinks he’ll tell Phyllis about it later. She may feel safer knowing there’s a policeman just next door.


	13. Chapter 13

He knows Mrs Crawley to be a fast worker, but Molesley is still startled by the speed with which she accomplishes her business. After being delayed by an interminable staff meeting, he arrives upstairs in the late afternoon and is greeted not by Phyllis, but by Zara in lilac crepe silk and white gloves, with high-heeled white shoes on her feet and a demure string of pearls draped round her neck. Her cheeks are pink with excitement, and possibly also with rouge. Phyllis doesn’t bother with makeup often, but she has a drawer full of vintage-style cosmetics in shiny metal compacts and tins—sweet-smelling powders, sticky creams, a waxy black cake that needs mixing with water—and he can imagine her doing some work on Zara’s face with only a little encouragement. 

“Mum said it was all right to visit again,” Zara informs him.

“I’m happy to hear it,” Molesley says, and she grins.

“Me and Mo were too. He’s brought his work. Mrs Crawley said you’d help. Come in and see.” 

Inside, everything is cheerful chaos and untidiness, with all the lamps and the fairy lights switched on, the wheeled clothing bins pulled out from underneath the sewing table, and their contents draped over every available surface. The full-length standing mirror from Phyllis’s bedroom has been dragged next to the sofa, where Mohammed is ensconced amidst clouds of tulle and chiffon, reading a book as if nothing is happening around him. His sister clops past him in her high heels and leans in through the open bedroom door. 

“It’s Mr Molesley. I asked first, like you said.” 

“Oh, good,” Phyllis says, appearing in the doorway. She’s as flushed as Zara and looks somewhat overwhelmed, but her face is full of genuine pleasure as she comes to him and gives his arm a secret squeeze—no kisses in front of the children, he realises ruefully, at least not at this stage. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he says. 

“Are you late? Oh—it’s dark already. I hardly noticed, we’ve been so busy.” 

“I can see,” Molesley says. At the core of his delight at her happiness, he’s ashamed to discover a sudden, unattractive thread of jealousy, like a squirming green worm in an apple. He wants her to be pleased—that’s why he’s arranged for this visit—but a tiny selfish bit of him also resents the intrusion into the private world they’ve shared until now. He hopes Phyllis won’t notice, but Phyllis’s emotional radar is finely attuned to other people’s feelings, and a flash of anxiety crosses her face. 

“Is everything all right?” 

Molesley looks from Zara, busy rummaging through a pile of scarves, to Mohammed, lost in his book, and then back to Phyllis. At that moment, the version of Mrs Crawley who lives in his subconscious speaks up sharply—_ don’t spoil it, Molesley _—and gives him the prodding he needs. 

“Better than all right,” he says. Saying it out loud makes it true, or close enough not to matter, and he feels almost as relieved as Phyllis looks. She sweeps the discarded dresses to one side of the sofa, making room for him, and he sits down next to Mohammed. From this angle, he can see the book’s title, _ Skullduggery Pleasant_, as well as a web of cracks in its binding from many past readings. 

“Is that a good book, is it?” Molesley waits for an answer, but doesn’t receive one, although he senses Mohammed’s attention directed at him like a laser beam even as the boy turns a page and rubs absently at the side of his nose. He tries again. “I’ve heard you might like some help with your maths.” 

“It’s that BIDMAS stuff,” Zara says over her shoulder from the mirror, where she’s trying on a white silk cloche, water-stained from some century-old rainstorm, to finish off her look. “Brackets and multiplication and all that. I told him you just go in order by the letters, but he says he can’t understand it.” 

Molesley has never yet heard Mohammed utter a word, but supposes he must talk to his sister when they’re alone together. Fair enough, he thinks; he’s had more than his own share of tongue-tied moments, although Mohammed doesn’t seem particularly shy, just silent. He’s put down his book while Zara is speaking, and is regarding Molesley soberly, from under a fringe of impossibly long, dark eyelashes. 

“Let’s see what you’ve got for homework,” Molesley says. 

As if he’s been waiting to be asked, Mohammed whips a ring binder out from underneath a cushion and spreads it open between them to display a worksheet with lots of heavy pencil marks and incomplete rubbings-out. He’s a boy of few words, but he listens well, and after Molesley guides him through several of the questions, correcting mistakes as they go, he seems to be catching on. Zara calls encouragement to him while Phyllis decks her out in a succession of linen frocks and feather-trimmed evening gowns and a variety of hats, and then for a change, in a short wool trouser suit with her hair tucked up under a cap. She’s just come out of the bedroom in a shin-length black dress, dripping with fringe and beads, when the screen on her mobile phone lights up and she scoops it off the back of the sofa to check. 

“Mum says to be home in ten minutes.” She looks at her brother and then at Phyllis. “Should I say we’ve got to help tidy up first?” 

“That’s all right. Turn round and I’ll undo you.” Phyllis deftly unpicks the button and loop at the back of Zara’s neck. “Go on and take this off, and then you’d better hurry along. I wouldn’t want to send you home late when your mother’s only just said you could visit at all. Something tells me she wouldn’t like that.” 

Zara offers Phyllis a smile full of gratitude for understanding and disappears into the bedroom again, holding the unbuttoned dress against her front with crossed arms. A minute or two later, she re-emerges in jeans and a hooded pullover with ADIDAS printed across the chest, hands the dress back to Phyllis, and then throws her arms around her for an impulsive hug. 

“Thanks for having us, Miss Baxter.” 

“It was my pleasure, sweetheart.” Phyllis strokes Zara’s glossy dark plaits with a fond touch. “I hope you’ll come again.” 

“We will, as soon as we can.” Zara clings harder for a moment before letting go. “But right now I’ll get murdered if I’m not there to help cook the rice. Come on, Mo.” 

Mohammed packs up his school bag and book and nods briefly to Molesley, and then both twins depart, leaving their hosts surrounded by the detritus of their visit in a room that abruptly seems very quiet.

“I think we’ve just survived a hurricane,” Molesley says, and Phyllis laughs and collapses onto the sofa beside him. 

“It’s worth every bit of mess,” she says. “I knew I’d been missing those two, especially Zara, but I didn’t know just how much until I saw them again. That was a brilliant scheme of yours.” 

“Mrs Crawley told you?” 

“Zara did.” She settles in against him, rests her head on his shoulder. “Violet must have been up with the larks this morning. She paid her call before the twins had left for school, I expect because she thought their mother would be more likely to say yes if they knew they’d been invited, and that you’d offered to help Mohammed, of course. Zara reported on the whole conversation to me when she arrived. She ought to be Violet’s apprentice.” 

Molesley pictures Mrs Crawley as Yoda, instructing Zara in the ancient Jedi art of clouding people’s minds over tea in her sitting room, and buries his face in Phyllis’s hair to stop himself laughing out loud. 

“What?”

“Nothing,” Molesley says, muffled. He breathes in the rosewater scent of her perfume and vows not to let himself be petty about sharing her with other people. Any fool can see how good this afternoon has been for her, even a fool called Joe Molesley. 

“Zara’s a lovely kid,” he says. 

“They both are.” Phyllis wriggles out from underneath him, leans forward and starts gathering the clothes that are within her reach. “If I’d had children of my own, I’d have been proud to have ones like them.” 

This is something Molesley has wondered about—like him, Phyllis is of an age to have a grown-up son or daughter, perhaps away at university—but hasn’t dared to ask. It’s been lost somewhere in the blank white fog bank of her past until now. 

“But you didn’t?” 

“No, I thought I might at one time, but it wasn’t meant to be. What do people always say in Shakespeare? The stars were wrong.” Phyllis is folding blouses and scarves into small, soft bundles as she speaks, making a pile on the coffee table. “Anyway, I’m too old now even if I wanted to, so there’s no point being sad about it. Please can you hand me that skirt? The pink one with the flowers.” 

He passes it over to her, then gets up to help with the rest of the clothing explosion: he’s not much good at folding, but he can at least collect things and bring them to her. On the sewing table, her embroidery commission is covered with its white cloth, but draped differently to when he left for work; she must have showed it to Zara, just as he’d imagined her doing. As he makes his way past the window, picking up stray gloves, he glances out and sees a familiar car parked up just outside the building, reminding him of something else that happened earlier in the day. 

“I meant to say, I finally met one of the neighbours from number 41 this morning.” He takes the gloves to where Phyllis is working, still sat on the sofa, and lays them on top of her growing pile. “Well, I wouldn’t quite say I met him, but we nodded to each other, which was an improvement over the usual. He’s been giving me funny looks every time I’ve seen him since I moved in.” 

“He has?” Phyllis’s voice is suddenly full of taut, vibrating agitation. “What sort of looks?”

“Suspicious ones,” Molesley says. “But I’ve worked out why. He’s a policeman. He must stare at everyone that way.” 

“What does he look like?” 

“I don’t know, just a man. About as tall as I am, maybe a bit taller. Black hair. More of it than anyone his age deserves to have, if you ask me,” Molesley says, thinking of his own thinning locks with regret. 

“How old? The same as you? Older?”

“No,” Molesley says. “I’m rubbish at telling people’s ages, but at a guess I’d say he’s younger than both you and me, by a few years anyway. Not _ young _ exactly, but not more than forty, if that. You don’t know who he is, do you?” 

“I don’t think so,” Phyllis says. “I wondered if maybe...but the person I had in mind would be older, and definitely not a policeman. How do you know this man is one, if you didn’t speak to him?”

“He’s got one of those wallet things they keep a warrant card in. I saw it in his hand.” He sees she’s shaking and kneels in front of her, even though his joints protest with a screech he’s surprised she can’t hear. “Phyl, what are you so frightened of? If it’s not the man next door, is it the person you told me about before, the one who upset you with his message? I know there are things you’d rather not discuss, but if there’s someone out there who wants to hurt you—”

“I don’t know if he wants to hurt me,” Phyllis says bleakly. She drops the dress she’s been holding into her lap and covers her face with both hands, as if she can’t bear the intimacy of seeing or being seen. “I only know he thinks I ruined his life. And in a way, he’s right.” 


End file.
